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What Should Have Happened in Bucharest
NATO recently held its twentieth summit in Bucharest, Romania to deal with key issues facing the alliance, including one of the thorniest – expansion of its membership. While Romania, one of NATO’s most recent members, was an enthusiastic host and took great pride in its new role, some aspiring members of the alliance did not…
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Extra Baggage on a Trip Home
Thousands of miles from home, the troubling words of James Baldwin found me: It turned out that the question of who I was was not solved because I had removed myself from the social forces which menaced me—anyway, these forces had become interior, and I had dragged them across the ocean with me. Three weeks…
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Even Beneath the Haze, Blacks Used to Do Better
Ta-Nehisi Coates has a very smart piece on Bill Cosby’s latter-day “Come On, People” crusade in the latest issue of the Atlantic Monthly. It will deservedly be a standard reference for years to come. However, Coates makes one well-intentioned mistake: he thinks people who decry the current state of the poor black community are nostalgicists.…
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It's A Crisis
Perhaps one of the truest and most tragic lines in American film is spoken by the character Yellow Mary in Julie Dash’s Daughters of the Dust(1991) when she sadly declares that “the rape of the colored woman is as common as fish in the sea.” As a rape survivor, I speak on behalf of the…
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Big-Time College Sports is no Game
Am I my brother’s keeper? Clemson tailback Ray Ray McElrathbey lives his life by answering yes to that biblical question every day. So, two years ago with his mother battling a drug addiction and his absentee father crippled by an equally self-sabotaging gambling affliction, the question of what to do with his then 11-year-old brother…
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The Latest Wave of Black Genius
I was listening to Erykah Badu’s new CD, New AmErykah and I had one consistent thought, “This is genius.” Listening to New AmErykah, I was reminded of the powerful book, Black Genius edited by Walter Mosley, Manthia Diawara, Clyde Taylor and Regina Austin. Published in 2000, on the brink of a new century, the book…
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Blue Passport, Black Skin
The New York Times recently reported on the increasing popularity of “Slum tourism.” For North-American and European travelers who want more from their vacations than beaches and monuments, group tours of Brazilian favelas or Indian shanty towns offer access to some of the poorest pockets of the developing world. The article explored some of the…
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Generation Envy
I’ve always considered it a blessing to have grown up black during the 1960s when the walls came tumblin’ down. My formative years, politically, were shaped by protests against segregation and the Vietnam War, led by heroic men and women my own age. They made me a radical. In addition, the 60s came with a…
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A Counter-American Tale
Here’s the wonderful thing about Mos Def’s new film, Be Kind Rewind: I can’t remember a single triumphant moment—and there are several—when one character drives the scene. Solos are left for the emotional valleys; the peaks come in ensemble. That’s the film’s organizing idea, that collectivity fosters not just strength, but joy. It’s an awfully…
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NBA Playoffs: Stop the Madness
As we head down the final stretch of the NBA season, a time honored ritual will begin, calls to fix the playoff system. Not fix as in Tim Donaghy the crooked referee, but correct so that what is likely to happen this year won’t happen again. Everyone who follows the sport closely—and at this point…